


The Places We Call Home

by Poe



Series: home (let me go home) [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Autistic Geralt, Beta'd, Dandelions, Established Relationship, Found Family, Geralt gets a tattoo, Geralt is not so good with words, Geralt really loves Jaskier, Geralt's in a really good place now, Home, Jaskier is his home, M/M, Mentions of past abuse, Tattoos, Trans Geralt, With art!!!!, angst with fluff, autistic author, canon? we don't know her, nonbinary author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24235156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe
Summary: Optimist. He calls Jaskier that like it’s a dirty word. Jaskier smiles with it, loves it, repeats it until Geralt shuts him up, either a poke to the ribs or a kiss that swallows it all, and god – Jaskier’s mouth is just as forceful no matter what use he puts it to.*(Or: Geralt gets a tattoo, and finds home.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: home (let me go home) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822009
Comments: 33
Kudos: 347





	The Places We Call Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ACometAppears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACometAppears/gifts).



> Beta'd by the lovely and amazing @jesuisgrace (AO3). Idea sparked by the equally amazing jaybrogers (tumblr). Any mistakes are my own.

Geralt is arguably not good with emotion. Jaskier has been known to point that out to him. Years alone with only one grouchy raggedy brown cat for company and more than a few personal demons may have begun to turn Geralt into something hard, unbreakable because it’s safer that way. He’s been broken before and is loath to repeat the experience.

And yet –

There are a series of befores and afters in his life. Like beginnings and endings of chapters, they are demarcation lines just as clearly as the scars he wears are. He has fought, tooth and fucking nail, to get to where he is now, to who he is now.

There is a before, with Jaskier. He remembers it because of how quickly Jaskier turned it into an after, leaving his head spinning at the speed of the man’s arrival, the careful insertion into his life, one minute: in a pub drinking, wanting to be ignored – another minute: approached by a man who smiles like he knows everything is going to be okay.

 _Optimist_. He calls Jaskier that like it’s a dirty word. Jaskier smiles with it, loves it, repeats it until Geralt shuts him up, either a poke to the ribs or a kiss that swallows it all, and god – Jaskier’s mouth is just as forceful no matter what use he puts it to.

Geralt is lost, frequently, when he is with Jaskier, desperate to hold on, scared of letting go, because Jaskier is vulnerability and gentle smiles in early morning light and truly appalling spaghetti after Geralt slumps home, exhaustion heaped in his bones. If there is a map, for whatever this is, Geralt hasn’t found it, doesn’t know where to begin looking, envies Jaskier’s ability to take everything in his stride like there’s nothing Geralt could do to surprise him.

Well –

Geralt stands in the tattoo studio with a carefully folded drawing in his hand. It’s a fucking stupid decision but it’s a choice he gets to make, and he’s making it. The lobby area smells of antiseptic, like hospital, and it hits the back of his throat in a way that he hates. A woman waves him over, dark skin accented with gold jewellery that curves around the lines of her ears and nose and makes her look like some kind of warrior, powerful and decorated. She smiles at him and he presses the drawing to the counter, unfolded, torn at the edges and aged by decades, the creases cutting through the scribbled pencil lines.

“I want this,” he says, and the woman doesn’t even blink. He expected – scorn. Mockery. But she just keeps smiling, and takes the paper and looks at it.

“Your kid?” She asks, because the drawing looks like that done by a child, shaky lines overlapping and uneven on the paper. He shakes his head, because there are many befores and afters in his life, and this is one of them.

“No,” he says, “no children.”

“Okay, well, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Do you want any colour, or are you happy with it just so? And where were you thinking of putting it?” She asks, her eyes cataloguing the small image, like she’s already halfway through tattooing it.

“Yellow,” he says, words thick on his tongue and hard to unstick. “The back of my neck.”

He places a hand to the spot he wants, hidden by his hair and delicate on the nobble of bone that sticks out.

“No problem,” the tattoo artist says, and she’s still smiling, and maybe that’s part of it – because scared customers don’t come back, right? Geralt can’t find it within himself to smile back. “If you take a seat and fill out a consent form, I’ll have this drawn up for you. Just let me set up and I’ll call you back.”

The form asks for his name –

There are befores. There are afters.

He fills it in with careful block capitals, and carefully ticks off that he has no health conditions, signing at the bottom and clicking the pen, once, twice, three times, before placing the form back on the counter. He is the only one in the shop, and he is thankful for that.

He pulls a hair tie from his wrist, Jaskier likes to braid his hair but loses them as frequently as he buys them, so Geralt always keeps one on him, the soft squeeze of it against his forearm a reminder of home. He ties his hair back and high, off his neck.

His heart quickens a little as the tattoo artist comes to beckon him back, behind the counter, to where a black leather chair is inclined so he can lay on it, wrapped in cling film, and beside it, a wheeled unit holding unopened needles, a partially assembled tattoo machine, and two pots of ink – yellow and black.

The tattoo artist plucks the stencil from somewhere, and with careful motions, wipes down his neck, shaving off the baby hairs there, before pressing the stencil home, holding up a mirror so he can see the indigo stain there.

It is a marking. It is a reminder. _You can always go home_ , it says.

Home –

There are befores and afters.

He nods, and settles himself on the chair as comfortably as he can, resting his forehead on his folded arms.

“It’s going to feel strange,” the tattoo artist says calmly, “not like pain, but more like vibrations. If you feel lightheaded, let me know and I’ll stop. It’ll be over in five minutes.”

There are sounds of her opening the needle and mounting it into the machine, then the tempered buzzing as the machine springs into life.

“I’m going to do the first line, and you’ll let me know how you feel,” she says. He moves his shoulders in something like agreement.

The needle hits flesh and drags through it, and it’s impossible to pinpoint, vibrating through bone, like his spine is on fire, and then it stops, simple, quiet.

“Okay?” The tattoo artist asks. He grunts an affirmative. “Okay then.”

The vibrations make his head swim, so he closes his eyes and counts his breaths and thinks about home, about befores and afters and how this is an after, now, because this is ink, indelible and largely unremoveable, and it’s another choice, his body, settling slightly more so than before.

There is not much left of his childhood that he has held onto. There are reasons for that. Jaskier knows – enough. He understands there are questions Geralt can’t answer. But there was a dream. Not every night, but often enough that it felt safe, a place Geralt could return to.

A meadow full of yellow.

The other boys –

After his arm was broken, in the hospital, antiseptic smell up his nose and no point in crying because nobody was there to care –

A kind nurse who told him how brave he was, who handed him a small notebook and asked him to draw her something, and her scrubs had dandelions on them, little dots of yellow in a sea of blue, so with his left hand, pencil held awkwardly, unnaturally, he drew one – frustrated as the pencil skipped over paper and out of his control.

“If you’re an artist, you need to sign your work,” she’d said, mouth curved upwards in a smile so wide it made her cheeks full and red. With careful precision, his hand shaking with the effort, he’d written his name, _his_ name, forbidden and unused, but chosen all the same.

She’d never said anything, about how it didn’t match the name on the forms. She’d just told him now brave he was, what a good artist he was, how soon he’d be back playing with the other kids.

He’d tried to find her, years later, but time had whisked her away.

He’d left dandelions on her grave.

He doesn’t realise the buzzing of the machine has stopped until the artist lays a gentle hand on his upper arm.

“It’s finished,” she says, “I’m just going to wipe it down, then you can take a look.”

The cool of the liquid is tempered by the rough of the kitchen towel, and then he eases himself up carefully, and the artist produces the mirror again, and there it is, the same drawing, the yellow vibrant against the pale of his skin, the black outline messy just like it should be.

The artist tapes a small square of cling film over it, and runs him through aftercare, handing him a small tube of lotion to use. In two weeks, it’ll be healed, like it’s been there forever.

He pays, and tips generously, and the back of his neck throbs gently, a reminder with every beat as the blood flows past it.

After. This is another after.

He heads home, grabbing a snack from a corner shop to ease his head, strides long and boots hitting the pavement hard.

The flower shop on the corner of his street is still open, and he almost laughs when he sees a straggly bunch of dandelions for sale, wrapped up like something precious, out front. They’re fifty pence, so he buys them with his pocket change, and heads for home.

He opens the front door and the house smells faintly of smoke, so Jaskier is probably having some kind of kitchen disaster. Geralt smiles then. His hand goes to the back of his neck, but he stops himself. He can’t touch it, not yet.

He toes off his boots and shrugs out of his leather jacket, hanging it beside Jaskier’s green army jacket, which is bedazzled with sequins and studs and patches and pins. Nothing about Jaskier is quiet, and this is just as true of the swearing that rings through the house now as he tries to control whatever emergency he’s created for himself.

“Lasagne shouldn’t be this difficult,” he says, and grins up at Geralt from where he’s crouched in front of the oven, holding a smouldering bake tray. “Where have you been? Oh!” He spots the flowers Geralt is clutching. “My favourites!”

“Trust you to prefer weeds,” Geralt murmurs, but Jaskier dumps the failed lasagne on the side and sets about putting the dandelions in water all the same, tying the ribbon around his wrist like it just makes sense to do so.

Home is –

Hard to find.

Complicated.

It’s dreams of a meadow full of yellow flowers.

It’s a nurse who treated him like a human being.

It’s a drawing made by a scared little boy.

Sometimes, it’s even leaving.

It’s waiting lists and psych appointments and hormones and surgery and finally, peace.

It’s a cat with a rusty meow and the courage of an animal ten times her size.

It’s a man approaching him in a crowded pub with a dandelion tucked behind his ear and a proposition on his lips.

It’s a man who loves him, ridiculously, endlessly, despite it all.

“You’re thinking really hard,” Jaskier says, and smushes his finger into the frown line between Geralt’s brows.

“Just glad to be here,” Geralt replies, and Jaskier doesn’t push, and when Jaskier steps behind him to wrap his arms around his waist, he doesn’t comment on the tattoo either, because he knows – he knows Geralt better than Geralt knows himself, sometimes. He knows the words will come, whether it’s tonight or in a fortnight or in a month.

Geralt lets himself lean back against the warmth of Jaskier’s body, just a little, and feels the soft huff of a laugh behind his ear.

“I’m glad you’re here too,” Jaskier says. “Imagine how quiet it’d be without you!”

 _I love you_ , Geralt thinks. _You are home._

He doesn’t say it. But Jaskier knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the genuinely fabulous https://kayaczek.tumblr.com/ (https://twitter.com/_nataliabe).
> 
> Basically, me and Jay were messing around with what would be the dumbest tattoo Geralt could get, and then I started writing this and accidentally feelings happened.
> 
> I hope you like it! Comments and kudos are really appreciated, always, comments especially, no matter how short or silly you think they might be. I want to write more Witcher stuff (if you'll have me) so feel free to throw prompts at me on tumblr at jbbarnes.tumblr.com and I'm also on twitter at twitter.com/smallreprieves
> 
> Thank you for reading, and take care. <3


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